Paula Josa-Jones

body dharma 2

Randee Fox sent me this link. Daniel Mollner is 47 years old and is making a film a week about being a dancer, something that he has only recently claimed. It is a brilliant, generous idea.

I have just started making solos again. My friend Ryder hosts an open mike at Cafe Helsinki in Hudson, NY. She said, “Why don’t you do something?” And I thought, “Yeah. Why not?”

I have not performed a solo for over ten years. Here is what happened: Over a period of twenty years, I lost my ability to move, even to walk. My hips were GONE. Everyone said, “But you are too young to have the surgery.” Really I wasn’t, but I liked that they thought so. By the end, I could not even walk across the street. I felt a terrible sense of shame. “I am a dancer. I cannot move.”

The other thing that happened was 9/11. Many of my artist friends were creatively derailed. Mute. Numb. It went on for many months, even years. I went into a creative deep-freeze that lasted about seven years. I felt ashamed. “I am an artist. I cannot make art .”

It was finally the horses that brought me back, and a persistent, wonderful image of making a dance with horses and an aerial dancer, the beautiful Paola Styron.

The one thing I know about body dharma is that it is not one thing. It is not a straight line. It is a meandering river with backwaters and tributaries and terrible, ferocious class 5 rapids that will leave you washed up and rinsed out way downriver. It is also the only place to be: in the water, between the banks, flowing.

Sharing my experience and passion in a way that helps and supports others is what I love. I am always thinking about new ways to do that.